Published: February 26th 2024, 8:34:17 pm
UPDATE (10/03/2024): This version of chapter I won't be used either. I'll be going with the previous version of the rewritten Chapter I.
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(TITLE CARD and COVER ART PENDING)
There was a woman known as Doctor Raban Rabanow Rabanowicz, who currently lived in some place called “Lahanezy” by many.
“Urgh… Another patient?” Rabanowicz herself was laying on her bedding as if she was a patient herself. Her blonde “hair”, actually a cheap wig she had put on to fit in with the fashion of the land, was in a mess (not that it was ever taken care of to be in order in the first place). The black spots under her eyes was in-line with contemporary fashion as well, but those were from sleeplessness rather than anything deliberate. Her gambeson, the only item of clothing she owned, desperately needed to take a visit to the local river to be cleaned. Rabanowicz peeked at her visitor. All she could see was a vague humanoid blur. “Who are you?”
“Nicholas! W-we had a misfire, I’m bleeding out!”
“You again?” Rabanowicz searched the surrounding with her hand. Eventually she felt something cold and stone-like; it was her spectacles. She got them on, and the blur in front of her now looked semi-familiar. A youngish man with a long beard covering his throat, body covered by a fur coat that reached down to his feet. His undershirt had a few embellishments, like inlaid gold foil and frills, and his saber’s hilt was adorned with the cheapest gems that were still expensive in the eyes of any commoner which might gaze upon it. There in front of her was the model cavalryman of this realm, unimpressive as he was. “If you’re fine enough to talk, you’re fine enough to not die.”
“I don’t feel fine, it hurts!”
“If it hurts, you’re alive; I’d be more concerned if nothing hurt. Be calm and take a seat.” Rabanowicz calmly wiped her spectacles while Nicholas found himself a stack of hay to sit semi-comfortably on. “Alright, that looks… not pleasant. No, that’s not pleasant indeed.”
“Am I going to die?!” shrieked Nicholas, who was sweating from a mix of pain and fear. He had already began muttering prayer in preparation for meeting his end.
“No, as I’ve said, it’ll just hurt. A lot.” Rabanowicz took off a metal flask that sat on the belt of Nicholas, who was in too much pain to object. She opened the flask, took a whiff of its contents, and winced at how strongly it reeked of alcohol. “How do you mainlanders withstand this strong stuff?” She poured a healthy dose of liquor on the wound. Her eardrums were about to shatter from how loudly the man was screaming in pain. “Adohe shelmiy boczhe, praise be, at least it’s very effective. That pain is caused from all the miasma being warded off by the pungent liquor, you know. If it hurts then it’s effective.” She handed the half-empty flask back to her patient. “Drink the rest while I prepare something to relieve the pain.”
“Yes ma’am.” Nicholas wasn’t going to object to drinking on the doctor’s orders. He downed the whole flask in one go, his inebriation helping with the pain somewhat.
Meanwhile, Rabanowicz had returned with a small chest. She opened it and showed its contents to Nicholas. “This one’s mandrake, this one’s tobacco, and here would be opium but it ran out a while ago.”
Nicholas looked at his options for pain relief. The tobacco would be expensive as it came from the colonies, so he had one choice. “Mandrake.”
Rabanowicz handed Nicholas a handful of mandrake roots. “Be careful with it now, this is a very potent variety. Take only a small pinch, otherwise you’ll never experience pain – or anything else for that matter – ever again.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Rabanowicz extended her empty palm towards Nicholas. “That’ll cost you one leaf and three seeds.”
“Greedy heathen…” Nevertheless, Nicholas handed her one silver and three copper coins.
“All you people here are ‘yes ma’am’ until it comes to payment. You’d pay two more leaves for the same thing at the other quacks, you know. One is free to see them instead if one has any qualms about being treated by a heathen.”
“Yes, ma’am…” Nicholas retreated upon being able to find a retort, and the tent was empty once more.
“Adohe shelmiy boczhe, these cabbage-worshippers…” Rabanowicz placed the chest back. She intended to drift off to sleep now, unbothered by any more patients coming in with any more trouble.
“Unhand me you miscreants! Stop, this is against my rights as a human being!” The voice of a screaming man was slowly getting closer to Rabanowicz’s tent. Much to her discontent, two soldiers entered the tent carrying a screaming bloke between them. “What’s with you people?! Let me go!”
Outside of the fact that he was screaming like mad, Rabanowicz found many odd things with the man who had been dragged in. He was definitely a foreigner of some sort, with that jet-black hair and eyes that were shaped in a manner which she hadn’t ever seen and a style of odd necktie that extended down to his waist.
“We apprehended this raving lunatic, Miss Rabanowicz. The Captain’s curious as to what his deal his.” One of the soldiers handed a tiny pile of coins to Rabanowicz. “He’ll be paying for the treatment.”
Rabanowicz came eye-to-eye with the so-called lunatic. “…have you disarmed him?”
“He didn’t have any arms in the first place.” replied the other soldier. “We thought he was a spy, but he’s more likely to be an errant lunatic.”
Rabanowicz searched around her bed until she found her knife, which she kept on hand. “Let him go if he’s unarmed. Such a scrawny fellow wouldn’t be able to do much anyways, and I won’t be able to do anything if he’s being manhandled.”
The soldiers dropped the lunatic on the ground, which prompted a few words out of his mouth. Nobody could understand what he said, but his tone made it clear that he was less than pleased. “Oi, ii kagen ni shiro!”
“Interesting words. He either knows a foreign language or he’s speaking in tongues.” Rabanowicz noted town a crude transcription of what the man blurted down. “Oy, ee kakeniczirov? Do you need to go to the kakeniczrov? We have a fine hole outside for you to empty your bowels at.”
“Lady, I’m not speaking whatever you’re speaking. Actually, what am I speaking?” The lunatic paused after his nonsensical question. “Nihongo ja nai, niiza iz it Ingulrish, Chuugokugo wa… muri yo ne.” He looked around the room, searching for answers that were not there. “E, nande? Did I suddenly learn this language?”
“Considering that you can speak it perfectly at this moment, yes?” Rabanowicz was the most confused she ever was in her life. The soldiers were definitely right in their assessment that the man was a lunatic who had lost their mind, or was there something more hidden in the cranium of this man? The men had gotten bored of watching them talk, so they had left the tent already. “Alright, calm down monsieur. Let’s forget the complex questions for now. Start simple, like… Let’s start with your name.” That was the way a good philosopher should approach things, or so thought Rabanowicz, and she was a natural philosopher at heart. “I’m Doctor Rabanow Rabanowicz Rabanow of Kelm, though you can just refer to me as ‘Rabanowicz’ or ‘Doctor’.”
Watanabe had already forgotten her name by the time she had finished her sentence, except for the part where she was a doctor. “I’m Haruhi Watanabe, and you can just call me Watanabe. That’s what most of my coworkers called me. Anyways, glad to meet you doctor.”
Rabanowicz noted down the name of the odd man. She paused as if waiting for him to say something. Watanabe had nothing to say. The tent went fully quiet until Rabanowicz broke the silence. “So, aren’t you going to question something?”
“I have many things that I’d like to question, but I’ll be honest in saying that I don’t know what you’re expecting Miss Doctor.”
“Miss Doctor?” Rabanowicz was looking oddly at Watanabe before, but she now looked at him as if he was an alien from the farthest star in the universe. “I’ve never heard anyone say that, nor have I seen anyone not object to me calling myself a doctor.”
“Why? Have you not graduated from university with a doctorate?”
“I am a Doctor of Philosophy. From the esteemed Cyouc University in Éirois, in fact. You should still be able to find my copies of my thesis within its aged library if you ever go there.”
Watanabe pinched himself, thinking that this nonsensical conversation must be the product of a fever dream. Rabanowicz was still in front of him however, questioning why the man chose to pinch himself for no apparent reason. “So why would anyone object to you being a doctor if you have a doctorate?”
“Monsieur, are you aware that I’m a woman? Do you have any problems with your vision?”
“No, my vision is fine. I wouldn’t have called you ‘Miss’ if… What sort of conversation are we having right now?” He finally ended up blurting his thoughts out loud. Watanabe was used to the indirect way his fellow Japanese people loved to speak in, but even this was too much for him. “Please, just ask me what you want to directly.”
“Right, excuse me for not phrasing my question directly. That’s not a good way to conduct research.” She wrote a note to the corner to remind herself not to do that in the future. “Here’s the question, monsieur: Do you truly not see a woman with a doctorate as an odd thing? Please answer this question honestly.”
“No? I mean, almost all of my coworkers were university graduates, and a good deal of them were women.” replied Watanabe, who really was wondering what sort of alien planet he had landed on. Isn’t this a fantasy world? There should be some priestesses and knightesses right ‘round the corner. I think a university graduate isn’t too far from either…
Rabanowicz took a deep breath to calm herself down. “Keep it simple, keep it simple… Harohi Vatanabe, was it? It’s a name that I’ve never heard of. Where are you from?”
“I’m from…” Watanabe realized that there was no word for his homeland in the language he was speaking in. Whatever power that allowed him to speak seemingly disappeared when it met with a non-existent word. “…Nihon. An island nation far to the east.”
“To the east? That’s where Éirois is, not a so-called Nihon. Plus, you don’t look oriental to me. You look more austral, maybe from a coastal city somewhere in the Near Austral.” Rabanowicz scrounged around the tent before she found a relevant book, which was an encyclopedia. She flipped the pages until she saw what she was looking for: a page filled with black-and-white illustrations of a diverse array of peoples.
“See? These are what people from the Orient look like.” Rabanowicz pointed a group of figures dressed in wide-brimmed hats and long leather boots. Watanabe would have described their appearance as “European” unlike whatever Rabanowicz was using. “And these are people from the Near Austral.” She pointed at a group of figures in long flowing robes and straw hats. To Watanabe they looked like outdated caricatures of East Asians that one would have seen two centuries ago. “It’s my first time seeing someone from this region. I assume that you’re a pagan?”
“A what? I don’t get that word.”
“I’ll note that down as a ‘yes’.” Rabanowicz nodded at herself while quickly jotting further details down. “So, about your coworkers, what was your job… Or, scratch that.” Rabanowicz could feel that her question would only cause a whole lot more questions to bloom. Of course she had no problem with that, but she also had more immediate concerns to address due to the fact that Watanabe had been brought in as a captive of sorts. “Tell me how you got here in the first place. I assume you didn’t end up in an army encampment by complete accident.”
Watanabe cradled his head with his hands. He heaved a heavy sigh. “Where do I begin… I thought things would be going well after I landed myself in an isekai story, but…”
Thus Watanabe began recounting his first experiences in this new world.